Sky Strike (2 page)

‘Command must have heard we were having trouble getting you to wash, so they figured the only way to get you clean was to change your nappy.’ Digging Andrea in the ribs with his elbow, Dooley waited for the laugh he considered his due. It didn’t come.

‘Twenty minutes to the DZ. Check your weapons.’ Revell came back into the cabin from the cockpit. He carried his new 12-gauge assault rifle cradled in his arms. Four of the big drum magazines hung from his tight-hitched belt. Standing with his legs apart, he needed no hand-hold to counter the motion of the Black Hawk as it maintained maximum speed.

A burst of rapid automatic fire was audible from the next chopper in line. Libby couldn’t see the other door gunner’s target, but watched the arc of tracer spiral down to a farmyard. Smoke and a bubble of red flame were rising above the roofs as it was lost to view.

Bombardier Cline was finding it difficult to stay on the seat he had improvised from a stack of spare flak-jackets, teetering back and forth at every slight turbulence.

‘Frightened of losing something, Bomber?’ Pretending not to hear, Cline ignored Dooley. The big oaf was just letting off steam, no point in getting involved in a slanging match with him. Not only could he not be certain of winning, it would look bad in front of the Yank officer.

Noise and vibration rippled through the hull as the mini-gun unleashed fifty rounds. Sergeant Hyde moved to the door and looked out past their gunner. A fast settling plume of mud and debris partly obscured a sandbag-protected light flak- cannon. There was hardly time for it to register before it was gone.

It wasn’t possible for Hyde to tell if the weapon had been hit and damaged, probably it had, judging by the amount of muck that had been thrown up around it, but one thing was certain, it had been unmanned. His shouted warning to conserve ammunition was drowned by the roar of jets as a pair of A10 Thunderbolts, from the squadrons assigned to fly Wild Weasel flak, SAM and radar suppression missions, zipped past, deposited their entire load of externally carried stores on a seemingly innocuous stretch of woodland, and pulled sharply up and away into the sun.

Eyes watering, Libby watched the parachute-retarded fall of the cluster and fragmentation bombs. Just above the tree tops, each disintegrated: the cluster munitions into their hundreds of deadly and variously delayed bomblets and the daisy cutters into their millions of razor-sharp fragments. 

‘They said we wouldn’t see much opposition. Looks like the Airforce is determined to reduce that to none at all.’ Through the smoke Hyde could discern the hulls of several tracked SAM missile launchers, a whole battery. Some were partially buried by the trunks and foliage that had been intended to merely conceal them. More trees were falling, toppling across trucks and trailers already damaged by blast and fragments. Several spread-eagled bodies were fleetingly visible.

As the scene of the devastation was left behind they flew over a collection of a dozen Zil and Tatra trucks, all of them burning fiercely. Flames rose high, to lick about the radar dishes and masts on their roofs.

‘Looks like our flyers poked out the Commies’ eyes before coming back to hit the hardware.’ Libby saw the handful of troops attempting to tackle the fire throw away their extinguishers and run as the chopper squadrons beat past overhead.

Now, save for where it persisted in a few scattered hollows, the mist had dispersed.

‘Kothen in ten minutes. If Intelligence has got it right, we’re through the main anti-aircraft defences. From here on in it’ll just be random light stuff.’ Revell declined the mint Ripper was offering. ‘No, thanks. I’ve seen the effect they have on others.’

Only Clarence accepted, pausing from checking the ammunition clips for his Enfield Enforcer sniper rifle to take two. He put both in his mouth at once and chewed vigorously without change of expression, to Ripper’s obvious disappointment.

Twice they passed over military convoys and both times Libby made ready to return fire, but there was none. It might be different for the second wave. Several transporters and field cars sported pintle-mounted heavy machine guns.

Hardly any civilian traffic was to be seen, apart from the occasional tractor or cart-towing pushbike.

A few handfuls of livestock stampeded at the helicopters’ approach, running into fences and streams in their panic. For a moment Libby was tempted to put a burst into a scattering herd of cattle, but held back. Hyde was still close by, and the sergeant came down hard on needless expenditure of ammunition, very hard.

Including the belt already in the mini-gun, Libby knew they had six thousand rounds of ammunition for the weapon, less the few he’d fired off. Sounding a lot, in fact at maximum rate of fire, which the gun was quite capable of sustaining, it was just sufficient for one minute of action. But at this rate he’d be taking most of them back.

Movement in a far corner of a large field caught his eye. Yes, there it was. A rapidly rotating dish topped a tracked armoured hull, and Libby could see a figure, a man, running fast towards it. Other door gunners had seen the target and several lines of tracer hosed towards the vehicle.

One of the blasts of steel and fire cut across the runner; it could only have been by accident, he wasn’t worth the expenditure of a tenth of the ammunition. His remains were scattered over the meadow like pink chaff as his torso was nearly slashed into quarters.

For a fraction of time three other streams of bullets converged and pieces flew from the radar carrier also, as it was pounded and half-hidden by the smoke and sparks of the multiple impacts.

There were more buildings below them now. The villages had given way to ribbon development. Revell noted the change and took his seat on the bench, wedging himself between Clarence and Andrea.

The sniper attempted to distance himself from the contact, but there was not enough room on the bench. Instead he closed his eyes and part of his mind to try to ignore it.

Dooley sat chewing his lip, but it wasn’t fear that made him distort his stubble- darkened features, or play constantly with the sheathed bayonet at his belt. It was tension, an overpowering surge of adrenalin that would build and build until, at the moment they jumped from the chopper and into action, it would peak and he’d pour his pent-up energies into the battle.

One other person among them exhibited outward signs of his emotions. Boris was sweating. The Russian deserter frequently had to dab at his face with his cuff to wipe away the beads of moisture that formed faster than the cold draught from the open door could evaporate them. He had not said a word to anyone since the final briefing, when they’d learnt their objective, and now the terrors that churned inside him were draining him of colour.

Leaning forward, Revell tapped the Russian on the knee to get his attention. We’ll be down soon. I’m not all that keen on flying myself.’

Shaking his head, Boris stumbled over words he could normally select and speak with impeccable fluency. ‘It is not… not the flying...’ The major’s words sunk in, belatedly, and he hastily corrected himself, grasping at the excuse offered. This time the words came out in a jumbled torrent. ‘Yes ... yes it is ... the flying. I will feel better... yes better, when we are down. We will be down ... soon.’ That last word came very quietly, was lost in the scream of the engines and the beating whirr of the rotor blades. His face fell, like a man who has just announced his own execution. He had to wipe the sweat away again.

Ahead Libby could see the shining silver parallel strips of railway tracks. They crossed one set, then another, and now they were over a built-up area.

The pilot banked them to a new heading and they began the final approach to the drop zone, having to gain height as they did so, to be sure of clearing power lines, chimneys and radio masts.

A scorching wave of compressed air shoved Libby back into the cabin and he had to grab hold of the mini-gun to keep from falling as the helicopter alongside, that had kept them company for so many miles, dissolved inside a huge orange ball of flame as it was hit by a SAM missile.

Only the blazing hulk of the cabin, with one engine still attached, struck the ground as a recognisable piece of debris. The rest of the Black Hawk and its crew fell as a burning rain on to a waterlogged football pitch.

Further along the line another of their number was hit and began to fall, trailing a sheet of flame. Just before it exploded against the base of a giant cooling tower, Libby saw its door gunner jump. On fire from head to foot, he landed close by a line of tracked missile launchers. A dashing field car deliberately swerved to run over the body.

Their pilot was throwing their transport about the sky, at the same time dropping a series of flares, in an attempt to decoy missiles homing by infra-red.

The evasive tactics were giving Libby little chance to use the mini-gun to effect. He managed to put most of a hundred-round burst across the hull front of a quad-barrelled Shilka flak-tank, but had no chance to see what result he achieved.

Another helicopter cut in front of them, and as it did Libby could clearly see the pilot desperately wrestling with the controls, and the terrified expression of a young door gunner; then there were more targets before him, and he wasn’t able to see what sort of landing it made.

Successive curtains of anti-aircraft gunfire sent shells and machine gun calibre bullets smacking into and bouncing off the underside of the reinforced floor. More passed through the arc of the blades, making strange shrieking, zinging noises as they nicked or flattened themselves against the armour rotors.

A lone F-4 appeared from nowhere and unleashed a hail of rockets against a battery of SA-6 missiles and then-radars, parked in a railway goods yard alongside a row of four cooling towers. The whole lot blew apart and the fighter-bomber flew through the smoke of their destruction then climbed and turned for a second run across the front of the depleted line of helicopters.

This time the aircraft used its 20mm gatling cannon to lash a group of gun pits, before dropping a pair of iron bombs that straddled a line of parked trucks loaded with spare missiles. Two of them were tipped over, and another began to burn.

Constant vibration made Libby’s hands tingle as he sent burst after burst at the never-ending series of anti-aircraft positions.

Another Black Hawk plunged to earth, exploding on impact and giving its crew and passengers no chance of escape.

Tracer of every hue zipped past the cabin door, a large green one passing so close that Libby felt he could have put his hand out and touched it. Bullets beat against the chopper’s armoured underside, and ricocheted from its fuselage, making long scars in its camouflage paint scheme.

One mile to go. Libby heard it over his headphones; sandwiched between the constant list of targets the flight crew were feeding him. Not that he had time to search for those the pilots saw, nor did he need to. It seemed that every open space they flew across held its quota of SAM launchers or anti-aircraft guns. It was a concentration of defences the like of which he had never seen before.

A loud bang filled the cabin with deafening noise. Suddenly it was full of smoke and every panel in the fuselage began to shudder violently. Loose fittings bounced and tumbled about the cabin floor, some finding their way out through the doorway. Cline and his stack of bullet-proof vests went different ways. Fumes from the engine’s automatic fire-suppression system flooded down into the cabin through rents in the plates.

The helicopter was yawing from side to side and losing height. An apartment block flashed past on one side, an electricity pylon on the other.

With the shaking becoming still more violent, Revell was forced to hang on to a bracket with one hand, while the other he stretched out to Andrea.

She had lost her grip and was sliding towards the open door. Twisting round she managed to grasp his extended hand, and as she did Dooley also managed to reach her, and between them they hauled her to safety.

Buildings blurred past Libby as he kept his ringer hard down to fire off every round he could before they crashed. There was no aiming, no distinction between military and civilian targets. All he wanted to do was hand out to them, all of them, everything he could, before they got him. They were down very low now, and still with a lot of forward momentum. There was a fire somewhere above his head. An engine, or perhaps a fuel line, was burning, and blow-torch-like feathers of yellow flames kept dipping in through the top of the door to lick at his helmet and visor.

Out of control the Black Hawk side-slipped, the rotors sliced across the front of an office building and the ground raced towards them.

THREE
At the last instant the nose of the helicopter came up, but it was still travelling too fast when it struck the road. There were loud reports as the tyres burst, then the undercarriage was ripped off. The chopper’s broadside progress across the intersection was accompanied by the scream of grinding metal on stone and billowing clouds of sparks and smoke, through which scythed lengths of splintered blade and shattered panes of glass.

With a final jarring collision the cabin came to rest, and as it did the unchecked racing howl of the twin turbo shaft engines died. The silence was short-lived. Even as Libby’s sound-saturated eardrums began to recognise the fact that they had stopped, their deafening racket was replaced by another that played on a wider range of nerves. A hideous, nerve-shredding, distressed howling began to emanate from the cockpit.

‘Out. It’s starting to burn.’
The hefty shove Hyde gave him in the back helped Libby shake some of the shock from his mind, and he leapt down from the doorway to start helping out the others. A fierce fire raged over their heads as the flames fed on the punctured tanks of aviation fuel. Every breath was filled with the stench of kerosene and burning rubber.

Ripper and Clarence joined Libby in trying to salvage some of the demolition charges. Roasting smoke filled the cabin, and molten aluminium was dripping from the flames overhead.